


Let Me Break You

by writerindisguise



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x19 spoilers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Winchester Being an Asshole, Destiel - Freeform, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, Getting Together, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jack Kline as God, Lots of Angst, M/M, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Spoilers, There's A Tag For That
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerindisguise/pseuds/writerindisguise
Summary: Break him.The thought comes unbidden and painful. All Dean knows, as he listens to Cas speak, as he turns to see the Empty forming behind him, is the deal that Cas made. The words he’s saying, the smile on his lips—why does he look so happy. He can’t be.In a moment of true happiness. The Empty would take him.“Are you insane?”Additionally, the one where I read a theory that Dean took forever to respond to Cas cause he was trying to think of what he could say that would make it so Cas stayed. And then this happened.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 175





	Let Me Break You

_Break him._

The thought comes unbidden and painful. All Dean knows, as he listens to Cas speak, as he turns to see the Empty forming behind him, is the deal that Cas made. The words he’s saying, the smile on his lips—why does he look so happy? He can’t be. 

In a moment of true happiness. The Empty would take him.

“Are you insane?” Dean snapped. He swallowed the tears, forced a glare at Cas, curled his lips into a scowl. 

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._

“Me? Loving me? That’s your true happiness? Are you out of your frickin mind?”

_Please let this work. You can’t die. Not with me saying this. Not ever._

Cas’s smile was frozen in place, plastic and pained as Dean spoke. 

“You know what? You were right to know you can’t be happy if that includes me—as what? A boyfriend? Lover? What the hell is wrong with you?”

_I’m lying. Please believe me. Don’t smile. Don’t be happy. Break. Let me break you. I’m sorry._

“Dean,” Cas’s voice was weak, quiet. The smile finally fell from his lips. The Empty reached out, two tendrils shooting past Dean. One engulfed Billie. The other reached for Cas. Dean’s hand shot out at the same time Cas reached to shove him out of the way. 

_No no no, please. You can’t die believing that. You can’t die._

Dean’s back hit the wall, but his eyes never left Cas. The dark, inky blackness stretched over Cas’s shoulder, hesitated. 

_Please, please. He’s not happy. You can’t take him. Don’t take him._

The black ooze fell away from him, drawing back into the void, Cas still standing. Cas, his moment of happiness gone, snuffed out. But safe.

Dean never knew that silence could be painful. Sound, sound could be painful. It had been in Hell, before Cas pulled him out. The thought of it squeezed something painful and raw in his chest. But silence—silence wasn’t supposed to be painful. But this was. What was he supposed to say? 

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said, his words no less painful to hear than the silence. “I didn’t mean to make you angry or—“

“Save it,” Dean snapped. He stood from the floor, forcing himself not to look at Cas as he walked past him. “How the hell could you make a deal like that without telling me and Sam?” He asked, turning in the doorway to look back at Cas.

The angel gave him a sad kind of smile. “I knew the Empty would never cash in on it. She would never be able to.”

Dean shouldn’t have asked.

—————

The call from Sam was a welcome distraction, and by the time Dean and Cas met them in town, it was clear they had bigger issues.

Dean explained getting rid of Billie, mostly. 

“I thought the Empty couldn’t come to earth unless it was summoned,” Jack said, looking curiously at Dean. His eyes shifted to Cas. 

“Cas summoned it,” Dean answered. “So it took Billie, end of story.” Not end of the story, but close enough. 

“Okay, so that’s one problem. Now we just have to deal with Chuck, and get the rest of the planet back. Easy,” Sam said, his usual hopeful smile falling with every word. 

“About that,” Dean said. He shot a sideways glance at Cas, who had refused to meet his eye since the Empty took Billie. “We’re down one problem, but got another one to add in its place. Cas made a deal.”

Cas’s head shot up, eyes burning a hole in the side of Dean’s head. “The deal is unimportant,” he said. “The terms of the deal will never be met, so it will never be an issue.” Dean didn’t dare look at Cas. He didn’t want Cas to see anything in his eyes. To have hope. To know—Dean had to keep far away from there, at least until the deal was broken.

“Wait, what deal?” Sam asked.

“The deal he made with the Empty to save me,” Jack answered. He was still watching Cas, eyes curious and uncertain. He knew the terms of the deal, Dean could see it in his eyes. He was trying to figure out how Cas had summoned the Empty without being taken along with Billie. 

“Yeah, so our feathery friend here is destined to be miserable for the rest of his life, or be taken by the Empty,” Dean summarized.

“What?” Sam asked.

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Cas said. Dean could hear the annoyance in his tone, and couldn’t blame him for it. But honestly he didn’t care. Cas could be as annoyed as he wanted. Dean was going to find a way to get him out of the deal. “The Empty said it would come and take me when I experience a moment of true happiness. I’m perfectly content to live in the range between miserable and true happiness. It’s not one extreme or the other, as Dean implied.”

Sam looked more confused than ever. “Wait, this has been a deal since Jack came back? You haven’t been happy at all since then?”

Cas sighed heavily. “Happiness and true happiness are not always the same thing. As I said, there’s entire range between misery and true happiness. Can we please focus on the real threat here? Chuck destroyed the entire world except for us. We need to do something.”

Sam didn’t look convinced, but he agreed, and Dean didn’t push the issue. He knew they had a bigger problem in Chuck, but he wasn’t about to let this deal get swept under the rug either. And if Dean knew anything about his brother, it was that he wouldn’t let it go. That was all Dean had been counting on. 

—————

“Okay, but how does this plan break Cas’s deal with the Empty?” Dean asked, for what must’ve been the fourth time. Jack stood off to the side, staring at his hands, looking deep enough in thought that Dean wasn’t sure he was still paying attention. Cas was with Michael in the kitchen, and Sam was tapping his fingers impatiently on one of the blank pages of the book.

“I don’t know, Dean. We just have to figure out one thing at a time,” Sam said. 

“That’s not good enough,” Dean snapped at him. He groaned, dropping back into the chair, head in his hands.

It was silent for a long moment before Sam spoke. “Dean, how exactly did Cas summon the Empty?”

Dean took a shaky breath, blinking back tears as he looked up at Sam. “He uh. He said that—that happiness wasn’t in having. Just in being—in saying. Sam, he,” Dean paused, taking a breath and closing his eyes before he continued. “He said he loved me. He said he loved me, and that—loving me, saying it, that was enough, I guess. His moment of true happiness, for the Empty to come to take him.”

Sam didn’t look surprised. He looked…nervous? “What did you, uh. The Empty, it didn’t take him. What did you do or say to keep it from taking him?” Sam’s voice sounded pained, as if he dreaded the answer even as he asked the question.

“A lot of shit that I shouldn’t have,” Dean answered, eyes dropping to the floor, picking out a loose thread in the rug to stare at. “I couldn’t let him be happy. If he was happy, the Empty would take him. I said— Damnit, Sam. We have to break this deal. We have to get him out of this—“

“I know, I know, we will,” Sam cut him off quickly. He crossed the distance between them, leaning down to put his hands on Dean’s shoulders and look him in the eyes. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I love him,” Dean choked out. 

“I know,” Sam said again. It took Dean a moment to process what Sam had said.

“You—what?” Dean had only just pieced together what all of this meant. How the hell did Sam know? “How?” 

Sam frowned, letting go of Dean’s shoulders to drag his chair closer, sitting in front of Dean instead of across the table from him. 

“Remember when Chuck showed me the future? Our future, if we trapped him?” Sam asked. Dean only raised his eyebrows, silently telling Sam to continue because that small explanation made no sense. “Well, in it, we lost Cas. He took the Mark and it—You had to lock him in the Malach box.” He fell silent, and Dean was grateful for the moment to process what he was saying. He had been scared about Cas taking the Mark, but—the Malach box? Would it have really come to that? He’d thought Cas would be able to handle it. He was an angel. Surely he could’ve handled it better than Dean could.

Or it would’ve affected him worse because he was an angel. Either way, locking Cas in the Malach box—that would be worse than what they were dealing with now. At least now he still had Cas in his life, by his side. Even if he couldn’t be honest with Cas, he was there. 

“Things got worse, everything snowballed,” Sam continued. “We both got turned into vamps. You killed Jody, Bobby killed me. It was—But it started then. From what I could gather, it all started when you had to lock Cas in the Malach box. Nothing was the same after that. _You_ weren’t the same.” He paused, but Dean didn’t know what to say. “So yeah, Dean. I know.”

“I think I can do it,” Jack finally spoke, and Dean was grateful he didn’t have to. He sat up straighter, clearing his throat and wiping away tears that had fallen before tearing his eyes away from his brother and looking towards Jack.

“Yeah? What d’you got, kid?” Dean asked. He tried to make his tone sound unaffected, but was pretty sure he failed. Jack’s smile didn’t give anything away, though.

“If this plan works the way it should, I think I can make a deal with the Empty.”

“A deal?” Sam asked before Dean could.

Jack held his hands up in front of him. “Not for my soul, or yours or Cas. Not a deal any of us will have to pay. I think I can get us all out of this, and Cas free.”

—————

“This had better work,” Dean muttered under his breath.

“This is a stupid and unnecessary risk,” Cas said, his voice holding the same cold tone that had been more frequent as of late. Dean tore his eyes away from Cas when Sam held a beer out to him. “The Empty can’t collect on the deal, so what does it matter if it ever gets broken?”

“It just does!” Dean snapped at him. He stormed out of the room at the risk of saying any more. Jack had only just left with Chuck, powerless and weak, to go to the empty and try to swing a deal. Dean hoped beyond any kind of rational hope that a powered down former God was enough for her to release Cas from their deal. 

“Dean?” Sam’s voice called out behind him.

“I’m fine,” Dean said automatically. 

“Yeah well I hope this works too. I’m tired of watching this,” Sam said. “You know you don’t have to yell at him, right? He didn’t have his moment of true happiness or whatever when we were all hanging out, or having movie nights, or playing stupid board games. You don’t have to be a dick just to keep him from disappearing.”

“I know,” Dean groaned. He rubbed a hand down his face, rubbing angrily at his neck before turning back to look at Sam. Before he could say anything, Jack reappeared over Sam’s shoulder, and Dean’s eyes widened at the bright smile on Jack’s face. “Well?”

“It’s done,” Jack answered.

“It’s over. No more deal?” Dean asked. He needed clarification. He needed to be sure. He heard footsteps, and glanced past Jack to see Cas, confusion laced with annoyance across his features.

“No more deal.” Dean could barely hear Jack’s words over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. His determined stare never left Cas as he walked past Sam and Jack. The angel didn’t look happy about the news, or in any way like he cared at all. 

He had believed Dean. After everything, after Purgatory, after years of relying on each other, of Dean needing him there. And Cas had believed the cold words he had spat out in a desperate attempt to keep the Empty from taking him. 

That hurt worse than Dean would admit, but he pushed past it now. His hands fisted in the front of Cas’s coat, pulling him forward and pressing their lips together. He felt Cas freeze, and he didn’t move, didn’t pull back, only relaxing into the kiss when he felt tentative hands brushing his arms, one moving to lie against his chest. And in blissful perfection, the angel’s lips moved against his, pressing back, soft and uncertain. 

Dean finally broke the kiss, knowing that more than needing this moment, he needed to say something. “I’m sorry, Cas. Everything I said before, when the Empty was going to take you—I didn’t mean any of it, I swear. I couldn’t let it take you. I love you. Of _course_ I love you. I’m sorry, I couldn’t—“

“Dean,” Cas cut him off, and Dean finally took a breath, eyes registering the soft, hopeful smile stretching across Cas’s lips. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dean muttered, eyes dropping. He distantly heard Sam’s whispered tone and two pairs of retreating footsteps. “What I said—I’m so sorry, Cas.”

“It’s okay,” Cas said again. “You kept me here, with you. And we’re free—really, truly free now.” Then Cas’s lips were on his again, and maybe Cas was right. They were free, and more than that, they were free to be happy. That wasn’t a freedom Dean was every certain he’d be able to afford, but with Cas pressed against him, a strong and constant presence, he entertained the thought for the first time that maybe he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are my life blood. <3


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